Over the past three years, dozens of Russian businessmen and their relatives have bought Maltese citizenship. Among the buyers are founder and co-owner of Yandex, Arkady Volozh, and owner of O1 Properties investment and development company, Boris Mints. This was reported
by RBC with reference to the documents published on Maltese government’s official website.

Since 2004, 730 well-known Russians have become citizens of Malta. In addition to Volozh and Mints, co-owner of ICT Holding Ltd, Alexander Nesis, with his family, as well as the largest vodka producer in Russia and Beluga Group co-owner, Alexander Mechetin, landowner Igor Khudokormov and chief managing director and deputy chairman of Alfa Bank, Aleksei Marey, are in the list.

"Arkady Volozh spends a lot of time on business trips for the company. European passport allows him to travel with no visa. Nevertheless, he remains a Russian citizen and fulfills all the requirements of the Russian legislation," Yandex’s representative said.

Representatives of Mints, Nenis, Mechetin, Khudokormov and Marey gave no comments on the situation. A source close to Mints told RBC that the businessman became a citizen of Malta in 2016.

The list also involves a family of owner of FGC Leader development company, Vladimir Voronin, top managers of Kaspersky Lab, general director of Polyus gold mining company, Pavel Grachev, top managers of Huawei, Candy-Hoover Group and many others, RBC writes.

Russians have received Maltese passports via Citizenship-by-investment state program, which has been operating since November 2013. The minimum sum of investment in the state’s economy was found out to be €880 thousand, excluding commissions and fees.